I made a bike light indicator system out of a BlinkyTape, a PowerMonkey rechargeable battery and some Loom Bands. It starts off with the central front LEDs lit up bright white, and pressing the button on the BlinkyTape switches between steads/left/right indicator modes. The PowerMonkey is a simple little 5v rechargeable battery, with a variety […]
Category Archives: fun
Posting as Holden Caulfield on Secret
I finally found a way to make Secret less boring. I spent a week posting and responding to comments using carefully selected quotes from Holden Caulfield. I gave each one the same background (crimson denim) and I dropped the initial capital on each one in an effort to make the quotes slightly less formal. Catcher […]
Things meter
I’ve been using the Things app for a while for tracking projects and next actions with the goal of Getting Things Done. I wanted something to help me pay attention to the things I need to get done, and decided that a physical representation of daily progress would be an interesting thing to try. The […]
Lightspeed i-Helicopter and Turbo Drone mini quadrocopter – hands on reviews
The lovely folks at Paramountzone sent me a couple of shiny new toys to review. First, the Lightspeed i-Helicopter with on-board camera. As always with these Lightspeed choppers, you get a good selection of extra bits in the box, including two rotor blades and two tail rotors. With this one, you also get an 2 […]
Boring 2012
I spent today at Boring 2012. Now in its third year, in the words of conference organiser James Ward, Boring is “a day dedicated to the mundane, the ordinary, the obvious and the overlooked.” During the introduction he also told us that this was to be “the most boring one yet” and “I can only […]
Turbo Drone RC Quadrocopter – hands on review
The nice people at Paramountzone sent me a Turbo Drone four channel remote controlled quadrocopter to review. It’s 36cm across (including the rotors, which are 13.5cm each), making it just about small enough to fly indoors. The 500mAh 3.7v li-po rechargeable battery makes it conveniently easy to get spares; I had the exact same battery […]
Some of my collections
I spoke at the Shoreditch Ideas Club last night, an event that Hugh Garry organises for Shoreditch House. I wanted to explore whether the act of collecting might have some additional extrinsic value beyond the collection itself. It’s also a bit of a confession (spoiler: it turns out that I collect collections) so if you […]
Little Big Planets
Today, I’ve mostly been making polar panoramas. They please me greatly. Thanks to Dirk Paessler for a great tutorial.
GX Buggy micro RC car – hands on review
The Tomy GX Buggy is a micro remote controlled car from Tomy, the people who bought you the Q-steer and, before that, the Char-G. I reckon they’ve managed to come up with something even more fun here, and was very pleased when I was offered a sample to review. To get the obvious stuff out […]
Interesting 2011
Interesting 2011 was, as promised, more about activities than talks. After the traditional Final Countdown singalong and introductions from Russell, we were all very much in the mood for an interesting day. Stanley James Press provided all the equipment, instructions and patient help required for us to bind our own notebooks. Next up, Leila Johnston […]